Environmental lawyer Rui Amores has slammed back at the very staged ‘public appeal’ launched by environment minister Maria da Graça Carvalho during a visit to the Algarve earlier this month.
As multiple news sources reported, Ms Carvalho stopped short of wringing her hands in Faro two weekends ago when she begged “the people of the Algarve, and the country” from putting obstacles in the way of a project that promises the Algarve “the water it needs to develop”.
This always had to be seen as a simplistic way of approaching the desalination plant that authorities realise is needed due to the heavy demands of agribusinesses which they continue to encourage to the region. The desalinated water will be a way of ‘making up the losses’ in terms of mains water to households. It will ensure that families pay considerably more for their water; it will be very heavy on energy; it will pollute the sea. But it is necessary to reinforce the region’s water resilience, says the government.
One Spanish family (in business in the Algarve) has led opposition to this project so far. Legal challenges have not been mounted by the people of the Algarve, nor ‘of the country’: they have come from this one Spanish family, and PAS – the platform for water sustainability, which has repeatedly tried to explain why a desalination plant is not the answer.
Algarve fishermen have also sent appeals out to all bodies they can think of, calling for ways to stop the project – but they have not put any legal obstacles in the government’s way. Moral, perhaps – but not legal.
Rui Amores puts the situation into ironic perspective: “It is just a few pesky Spaniards, Madame minister. From Galicia, of all places, who came (how brazen of them) to the Algarve a few good years ago, who thought, think and will continue to think that your desalination project is a terrible one. These are the only people at this moment who are opposing the project”.
Amores goes on to explain that this one Galician family labelled as opposing the development of the Algarve “have not done anything over the years but develop the Algarve, creating employment, generating tax revenue, stimulating the economy.
“Go to Olhos de Água and see for yourself. Even so, these incorrigible Spaniards should apologise to the Minister, and through her to Portugal”, he continues the sarcasm. Because if it wasn’t for them complaining, no-one else would. “No Portuguese person or collective has the courage and/ or the capacity to do so.”
Accepting that “the Minister prefers those who are obedient, well-behaved, and do not complain”, Amores agrees that this Spanish family does not fit into this category.
“They should also apologise for bringing to the attention of an independent body outside the Minister’s jurisdiction facts such as the destruction that the brine flowing directly from the pipes into the sea will cause to the marine ecosystem. Fishermen can say goodbye to fishing; toxic by-products and chemical effluents will go straight into the sea. (They should apologise for) an environmental monitoring proposal that is nothing short of shameful; the hydrological risk that I will not explain here so as not to alarm readers; etc… etc…
“These Spaniards are really annoying. They are nitpickers who worry about things like this and at the same time want to save their business and, on top of that, have the future of the Algarve in their hands. How audacious!” Amores writes, before finally putting the boot in:
The Galicians, he says, should apologise for wanting to know what money is being spent, where and how.
“Utter effrontery. In a project with a base price of €90,000,000, with a partial price of €80,000,000 for the construction component, and where competitor no. 2 submitted a bid of €107,922,830 – well above the base price – what we saw was the most expensive bid being accepted! Why? Because the tender jury considered it to be the most economically advantageous bid”, says Amores.
“This ‘minor’ change forced Águas do Algarve to review its decision to authorise expenditure, increasing it to €107,922,000. This was a truly exceptional decision that warrants closer scrutiny.
“Once again, I apologise, Minister.
“I think those to whom you are sending the message to keep quiet want to tell you the following: the desalination plant project that you have embraced with such fervour is rubbish. The environmental impact assessment procedure is riddled with illegalities, inaccuracies and strategic omissions and, as such, must be fought with all our might.
“The courts are there to provide justice to those who consider themselves wronged. Right now, the Algarve should rise up against the Minister for the Environment. But in the absence of a popular uprising against this project, we have some Galician Spaniards. That will just have to do.
“We regret and apologise for being restless, disobedient, defiant, non-conformist but, despite everything, lawful.
“In other words, and perhaps this is something that has escaped the Minister, what the Spaniards are doing is fighting for environmental, territorial and financial legality.”
Rui Amores’ irony/ ire and energy will be championed by all those who have tried, in their own ways, to speak out against this project which, as environmental engineer Cláudia Sil has stressed in the past, has been given a sense of urgency that has always been farcical. The message from the authorities has always been that the Algarve is rapidly becoming a desert, and cannot survive on the water that it has at its disposal.
Two extremely wet winters (the norm, locals who work the land will tell you: the region has always had periods of drought followed by periods of rain) yet authorities today keep impressing the fact that the Algarve’s ‘water could run out at any point’.
There is also the ‘issue’ raised by PAS only last month: authorities have ‘justified the unjustifiable’ in this project by “ignoring vital submissions”…
Sources: Rui Amores substack/ PAS/
